11/24 at 12:11 AM

Finding out the key to the Auburn men’s cross country team’s abrupt turnaround isn’t exactly a scoop of any sorts.

There’s nothing in the water, there’s no wacky training program and the team isn’t taking any short cuts — neither literally nor metaphorically speaking.

The runners are just better than they used to be.

“When you put a lot of talent in one place,” coach Peter Watson said, “they kind of feed off each other.”

That boost in talent has produced results, merited honors and sent the Tigers to places not seen since well before a number of the teams’ current runners were even born.

The Auburn men will make their first appearance today as a team at the NCAA championships since 1985 and just the fifth in team history. The men’s 10K race will start at 11:48 a.m. on the LaVern Gibson Championship Cross Country Course in Terre Haute, Ind.

Sophomore Holly Knight will be the lone representative from Auburn’s women’s team, and will run the 6K earlier in the morning.

“It’s a positive attitude and everyone’s been focused on the team,” Watson said. “You get the talent in, and everything is good.”

Watson, now in his fourth season with the team, has scoured the world to bring in that talent.

Before he was hired by Auburn, Watson, originally from Ontario, Canada, spent half a year in Kenya. He developed a number of contacts, which he still maintains and continues to build as the Tigers’ roster has grown more and more diverse.

Five of Auburn’s 11 runners were born outside the United States, ranging from Belgium to Ethiopia.

“We take some criticism for being so international, but it’s the SEC,” Watson said. “You’ve got to get the best talent that’s out there.

“Top American kids, I recruit them all. I make the phone calls, I make the letters. But they all want to go to Stanford or Oregon. It’s very hard to bring them down here to Auburn because we haven’t had the tradition of distance runners.”

For Watson, the first step toward developing a tradition began with the arrival of Felix Kiboiywo.

Watson met Kiboiywo, a junior from Eldoret, Kenya, before he even got his first phone call from Auburn. Kiboiywo, originally a volleyball player, had just picked up running in his senior year of high school.

Watson saw a star in the making. Kiboiywo did too, and the only place he wanted to hone his speed was thousands of miles from home, on the Plains.

“I realized,” Kiboiywo said, “’hey, I can have the potential to be good.’”

That potential has translated into a myriad of honors, as Kiboiywo was named the NCAA South Region Athlete of the Year his sophomore season and did it again this year. He finished 112th at last year’s NCAA Championships.

“He was basically what turned this program around,” Watson said.

But it takes more than one star runner to take an entire team to the Championships. Kiboiywo has done his best to help along the Tigers’ younger runners, taking a leadership position on Auburn’s eclectic team.

Elkanah Kibet — a junior from Iten, Kenya — and Girma Mecheso — a highly recruited freshman from Ethiopia, who moved to Atlanta for high school – finished second and third, respectively, behind Kiboiywo at the NCAA South Regionals.

“Those guys really want to be good,” Kiboiywo said. “We just talk together. That’s the best thing I can do.”

The path Knight took to Auburn still required a trip across the Atlantic, but her recruiting differed slightly from Kiboiywo’s and Mecheso’s.

Let Watson explain it.

“Finding Holly was really hard,” Watson said. “I was drinking my coffee, checking my e-mail and she just showed up.

“Probably the best e-mail I’ve ever gotten. I’ll take those every day.”

Knight, who hails from Devon, England, knew she wanted to leave the concrete-heavy running of the United Kingdom for the greener — and warmer — pastures in the United States.

During her first visit to Auburn, which happened in November with the temperatures hovering in the 70s, Knight signed immediately.

A sophomore, Knight won her regional 6K by 21 seconds to earn her solo ticket to Terre Haute.

“I would like the girls to see what I’ve done and maybe they can do it as well. It is possible,” Knight said. “It’d be nice not to be the only girl.”

If the upward trend continues, she likely won’t have to wait very long. Auburn’s talent isn’t going anywhere, as the men return all their runners for next season, while the women lose just one.

And Watson promises more talent is running through the ever-growing pipeline.

“It’s hard not to look down the road with this team,” Watson said. “But the (NCAA Championships) are a good building block. We’re going to go in, see where we are and learn.”

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